


Drift

by oselle



Series: Birthright [5]
Category: The Faculty (1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Conspiracy, Gen, Men in Black - Freeform, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 12:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oselle/pseuds/oselle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Casey, in That Place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drift

**Author's Note:**

> Podfic available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941219).

Casey thinks it’s been eighteen days since he woke up in this room, but he doesn’t have anything to mark it with. Eighteen days and he’s seen no one except the nurses who come in with his meals and medication and the orderlies who accompany them. Not his mother, not even the shrink. No one. Casey wonders if they’ve forgotten about him. He wonders if the meals will stop next and they’ll just leave him here to rot.  
  
This isn’t the first room Casey’s been in, although he has an indistinct memory of the others. This room is higher up; he knows that from looking through the one narrow window. It’s not easy to see through; a sturdy wire mesh is bolted against the window, then there’s a gap, then the window, then more mesh. Casey can’t even touch the glass. But he can see a parking lot and a stretch of highway. At night, in the distance, he can see familiar signs. McDonald’s. Dairy Queen. Pizza Hut. It’s winter now and Casey knows that it wasn’t winter when he came here, so he’s been here much longer than eighteen days.  
  
He teases the nurses sometimes.  
  
“Is this my cyanide pill, finally?” he’ll ask when they bring him his nightly dose of medication. They smile and shake their heads, but Casey isn’t really being funny. He thinks it’ll come to that eventually. One nondescript pill mixed in with all the others in the little plastic dosage cups; he’ll take it and won’t wake up.  
  
Every morning that Casey wakes up, he realizes they aren’t finished with him yet.  


  
_____  
  


Solitary confinement. It’s solitary confinement and no one will tell him what he’s done to wind up here, when or if he’ll ever get out. He asks the nurses why his mother hasn’t come to see him, and they answer that his doctor will come in to talk to him about that, but she never does. Casey never thought he’d miss the sight of his doctor’s face, but at least she was someone that he knew, someone he could still tie to his old life, to home and school, other things he never thought he’d miss.  
  
Casey walks the perimeter of his room every day, all day. He has nothing else to do. He walks until he’s exhausted, then takes a shower, crouching down in the narrow stall and letting hot water drum on his head and back. He watches the world outside the window move on without him. The patchwork pattern of cars in the parking lot shifts and changes like a kaleidoscope. McDonald’s’ golden arches illuminate every evening at dusk. One day it snows and Casey stands at the window for hours.  
  
Casey’s mind drifts and he’s back at school, stumbling through his day. Class, class, class, then lunch. Soon it will be too cold to have lunch out on the bleachers, but today, maybe for the last time before spring, Casey can still eat in peace. It’s depressing, but better than sitting by himself in the cafeteria, inhaling his lunch so he can escape before he attracts a prank or beating. Here he can eat slowly, he can watch the gray autumn clouds drift overhead while leaves scatter onto the empty football field and blow away. Then class, class, class and a newspaper meeting after school. Delilah says she likes the pictures he took of last week’s game. Her offhand compliment glows in Casey’s chest like a warm coal.  
  
Casey walks home because it’s too late for the bus. His parents won’t be home for a few hours and sometimes this is a good thing, like it was on the day when Casey got banged into the lockers and his face was so bruised he had to use his mother’s makeup to cover it up. Today he wishes someone was waiting for him at home. His mom, even his dad, but his mom or dad the way they used to be, when he was little and they liked him more. Somewhere in the future is college, a job, a whole other life, but Casey can’t see any of it now, can’t see beyond the lonely torment of school, the lonelier boredom of home.  
  
Casey lets his feet drag in the leaves. Wetness touches his face and he thinks it’s raining, but it’s snow, early snow. He turns his face up and closes his eyes, letting himself drift. If someone from school is driving by and sees him standing out here by himself, mooning up at the sky like a retard, he’ll be in deep shit tomorrow. But for now Casey’s alone on the street, and it’s white and silent. He lets himself drift, far away from school and his parents and Herrington. Drift. Drift.  


  
_____  
  


“I am Casey Connor,” he says into his pillow at night. “Casey Martin Connor.”  
  
The nurses only call him, “Casey,” and he wonders if they know anything else about him other than that “Casey” gets three meals a day and a bunch of pills every night. They don’t talk to him, they hardly even look him in the face.  
  
“I am Casey Connor,” he says. He is almost starting to forget, himself.  


  
_____  
  


Someone finally comes to break Casey’s solitary confinement, an orderly telling him that he’s going to a session.  
  
Casey is sitting on his bed; it’s the only place to sit in the room and it’s a high hospital bed so his feet dangle. He’s wearing gray, rubber-soled slippers that close over with Velcro tabs. He’s forgotten what it feels like to wear shoes.  
  
“What kind of session?” Casey asks warily.  
  
“I don’t know. They told me to come get you.”  
  
The orderly is twice his size and Casey knows there’s no point in putting up a fight. He hardly feels up to it anyway; his head has been muddled lately, he has headaches and he sometimes thinks he’s seeing and hearing things that aren’t there. Casey slides off the bed and walks out of the room, the orderly following him.  
  
It’s the first time he can remember being out of the room. He’s in a long green corridor lined with doors but it’s so quiet that Casey doesn’t think there’s anyone behind those doors, anyone here at all besides himself and the orderly who walks one step behind him, like a shadow. “A session,” the orderly said, and Casey knows there have been other sessions and that things have happened in other rooms and suddenly he wants to be back in his own room with its high bed and wired window and the video camera that blinks in the corner of the ceiling with a red light. He hates that room but he’d give anything to be back in it, alone and drifting.  
  
The orderly stays outside while he lets Casey into a room. There are three men sitting at a table. On the other side of the table is an empty chair.  
  
“Have a seat, Casey,” one of the men says, and gestures with his pen.  
  
There’s someone else in the room, against the wall. Casey thinks it must be another patient, the first one he’s seen since he’s been here. He wonders if that patient is part of the session, but thinks that the guy doesn’t look up for much talking. He looks like a ghost, a pallid, scrawny wraith in white pajamas.  
  
“Who’s…” Casey asks, and gestures at the other patient, and the patient gestures back and Casey realizes it’s him. There’s no mirror in Casey’s room and he’s had no idea what he looks like and now he knows that’s he’s turned into that thing in the mirror, a wasted mental patient in white mental patient pajamas, with hollow circles under his eyes and barely-healed cuts running up his wrists.  
  
“Sit down, Casey,” someone says, and he sits.  
  
Casey tries to answer the men’s questions but he knows there are right answers and wrong answers but that it changes depending on who’s asking, so he sits there and tries to figure out what the men want to hear while his eyes keep cutting over to his jittery image in the mirror. He wants to go back to his room and he’s afraid that if he gives the men the wrong answer he’ll wind up somewhere else, in a green room where they tied down his arms and stuck something in his mouth and then everything drifted away for a long time.  
  
Someone asks him about Delilah, Delilah who liked his pictures once.  
  
“No,” Casey says, confused. “She goes to boarding school…”  
  
“No, Casey, that night. Tell us about Delilah _that night_.”  
  
Casey plows through his memory but there are gaps in it, pages torn out of a book. The men’s faces are impatient, demanding. “I don’t know…”  
  
“He’s lying,” one of them says.  
  
“I’m not!” Casey protests, desperate. “I’m not, I can’t remember, I can’t…”  
  
The men put their heads together and whisper to each other. One of them looks up and signals the orderly outside the door. Casey follows his hand gesture.  
  
Casey bolts from his chair but the orderly is fast and big. He gets Casey with one arm, wrapping it around Casey’s narrow shoulders, immobilizing him. With the other hand he pushes up Casey’s sleeve. Casey twists his head around to look at the men. They’re watching implacably.  
  
“What do you want me to say?” he shouts. His voice rings off the walls. “Tell me what you want me to say!” He can see himself in the mirror, bent double like a puppet in the orderly’s grip.  
  
The men say nothing and the orderly sinks a hypodermic into Casey’s upper arm. It feels as big as a knitting needle. Casey squeezes his eyes shut and bites down on his lip. The orderly sets Casey’s chair back on its feet and plops Casey into it. Casey wipes his mouth. His hand is shaking and he sees blood on his fingers.  
  
“All right, Casey,” one of the men says. He folds his hands on the table in front of him. “Now we can talk.”  


  
_____  
  


Casey talks. Casey talks and talks until he doesn’t even know what he’s saying. He talks until his eyelids droop and he’s falling forward on the table.  
  
The orderly takes Casey back to his room, one hand around his arm. Casey’s slippers scuff along the floor, _whish-whish_. His legs feel boneless. He has to hold onto the wall while the orderly buzzes the door open.  
  
The orderly leaves him alone and Casey is happy to see the bed. The bed and the quiet and no men asking questions and no green room and he’s so tired he doesn’t think he can make it all the way across the room but he does. Casey crawls into bed. They’ve changed the sheets while he was out and even though the new bedding stinks of detergent and bleach, he burrows into it and passes out.  


  
_____  
  


Casey dreams that he’s in the hospital. This makes sense because he feels sick, but it’s a dream, so he knows that he’s not really sick. There’s been a mistake, he’s not supposed to be here.  
  
 _I’m going to wake up now,_ he thinks, and he’ll wake up in his bed in his own room. He’ll wake up and go to class and then tonight he’ll go to the football game with Delilah, who likes him now, not just his pictures. Stan and Stokely will be there too; they’ll all go to see Zeke play, Casey and his friends.  
  
Behind him, a brief buzzing noise and then _squeak-squeak_ , sneakers on a tile floor.  
  
“Dinner, Casey. Wake up.”  
  
That’s not his mother’s voice, so he must still be dreaming. _Wake up_ , he tells himself. _Come on, open your eyes, wake up._ He forces his eyes open and sees white sheets and a white wall. That isn’t right, it’s still part of the dream. His arm aches fiercely. How can something in a dream hurt like that? Casey wants out of this dream, out of it _now_. He makes himself roll onto his back and fluorescent light shines into his eyes.  
  
There’s a nurse in green scrubs looking down at him.  
  
“That’s it,” she says. “Good boy. Now let’s sit up.”  
  
“I’m dreaming this,” he informs her. His voice sounds foreign to him, thick and slurred.  
  
“Well, dream some dinner,” the nurse says. There’s another mechanical buzzing and the top of Casey’s bed comes up.  
  
“I’m not sick,” he says, but she doesn’t answer. She puts her hands under his arms to pull him up and he flinches when she touches him. People touching him, people are always touching him in this dream, handling him, lifting him, pushing him, dragging him.  
  
There’s a tray bolted to the bed, on a swing-arm. The nurse swings it in front of Casey and he sees a plate of bland invalid food. White rice. A pale piece of chicken. Carrots bleached beyond recognition. Apple juice in a peel-top plastic cup, like on an airplane. All the utensils are plastic. Casey can smell the food, he can see steam rising from the rice. He picks up the plastic fork with a hand that feels like someone else’s and puts a forkful of rice in his mouth.  He can taste it, white and starchy. You don’t taste food in dreams, you don’t smell it, you don’t feel the heat of it on your tongue. That’s why people pinch themselves to wake up, you’re not supposed to _feel_ things in dreams, like hot food or pain, like the pain in his arm, throbbing away relentlessly.  
  
Casey gags and spits the rice onto the plate. He pushes the tray and it swings away from him.  
  
“Now, Casey,” the nurse says. She sounds like she’s used to this.  
  
 _This isn’t real, it isn’t, it isn’t…_ Maybe they gave him the cyanide pill and he’s dead and stuck here forever. Maybe he’s always been here and everything else was the dream.  
  
“Casey,” the nurse says firmly. He opens his eyes and sees that she’s swung the tray back in front of him. Her green scrubs and dark hair are the only color in the room. Over her shoulder, Casey sees an orderly standing by the door, watching them.  
  
The nurse holds the fork out to him. “Wake up, Casey,” she says.  
  
It’s only a few seconds later but everything is different. Dinner is somewhere on the floor and Casey is backed up against the wall. At first he was screaming, “ _I’m awake! I’m awake!_ ” but now he’s just screaming, screaming senselessly while the orderly and the nurse wrestle him down on the bed and Casey kicks and claws and screams his throat into ribbons.  


  
_____  
  


Casey drifts and he’s on the steps outside the gym, with Stokely on one side and Zeke on the other. His teeth are chattering and he wonders if he’s in shock, but if anyone should be in shock it’s Zeke, whose face is streaked in blood. From the steps, they can see the rain-soaked Herrington campus, the melted hulk of Zeke’s car and the school bus still burning out in the parking lot. In the distance, Casey hears police sirens.  
  
“We should get the fuck outta here,” Zeke says.  
  
“What?” Casey asks. He’s having trouble thinking; everything that’s happened is starting to back up on him, badly.  
  
“They’re not gonna believe us, we should get the hell out before they get here.”  
  
Casey thinks that things are backing up badly on Zeke too, but he has an image of running away, of never seeing Herrington again. Zeke said “we,” after all. Casey’s never been included in anything and he wonders if these are his friends now, if this is what it feels like to have friends.  
  
The sirens are closer and they stand on the steps and stare at each other. Casey sees the three of them in a car, miles disappearing beneath their wheels. Interstates, county roads, farmlands. Plains. The ocean.  
  
Casey breaks the silence. “No,” he says. “We have to tell them. We have the proof. They’ll believe us.” This is the right thing to do, but regret twists in his guts as soon as he says it. Zeke sits down heavily on the steps and looks up at him.  
  
“All right, man. Whatever you say.”  
  
Casey sits down next to Zeke. He’s cold, freezing, as if it’s gone from Indian summer to winter all at once. He realizes he’s leaning against Zeke, but Zeke hasn’t shaken him off. Stokely sits down and puts an arm around him and the three of them watch as the police cars swing onto the campus, splattering them in red and white. Casey wishes he had agreed with Zeke, that they were in a car right now, running from this place.  


  
_____  
  


Casey wakes up for the second time that night. It _is_ still night, at least the window is still black through its screen of crosshatched wire. This time he knows he isn’t dreaming; the pain in his arm is enough to tell him that.  
  
He tries to shift into a more comfortable position but he can’t; his wrists are cuffed to the bed.  He examined those cuffs once, when he wasn’t in them. They’re manufactured by Arlen Medical Restraints in Tuskegee, Tennessee. He knows that from the little tag inside each cuff. The cuffs are tan leather with two stainless steel buckles on the outside and white foam padding on the inside. In spite of the padding, Casey has sometimes scraped his wrists raw trying to get out of them. Tonight he doesn’t bother. He’s had enough for one day, if it _is_ only one day. For all he knows, he might have been lying here for a week, drifting between Herrington and high school and this place.  
  
His arm is throbbing and he’s thirsty. He turns his head towards the corner of the room where the camera is bolted into the ceiling, its red light blinking. He croaks, “Hey,” at the camera, to let them know he’s awake. “Hey, can I have something to drink?”  
  
The camera blinks at him silently. Casey turns his head away and closes his eyes. He listens to himself breathe, in and out.  
  
A few minutes pass and then Casey hears the door buzz open and the _squeak-squeak_ of sneakers on tile.  
  
Casey opens his eyes and sees a different nurse, one he doesn’t think he’s seen before. There is no orderly with her. She leans over him.  
  
“How are you feeling?”  
  
“I’m thirsty,” Casey answers. “My arm hurts.”  
  
The nurse holds up Casey’s head and lets him drink through a straw. She sets the cup on the tray and rolls up Casey’s sleeve. Casey turns his head to see. There’s a black, swollen bruise on his arm. The nurse runs her fingers over it lightly and Casey winces.  
  
“They probably just hit the muscle too deep,” she says. “I’ll bring you something for that.”  She turns to go.  
  
“I’m Casey,” he blurts out. “Casey Connor. That’s my name. Did you know that?”  
  
“Yes, Casey,” she says. She smiles. “I’m Janelle.”  
  
“You’re new.”  
  
“You just don’t remember me, Casey. I’m going to get an ice pack for your arm. I’ll be right back.”  
  
“Wait,” Casey says, but Janelle has left. Casey closes his eyes again and hopes she’ll come back, because she’s the first person who’s actually spoken to him since he’s been in this room and he’s forgotten what it’s like to be spoken to, not questioned, not ordered, not pulled and pushed around, just spoken to.  
  
Janelle comes back with a gel ice pack and a pint of orange juice with a straw. She eyes the Arlen Medical Restraints.  
  
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” she says, and unbuckles them.  
  
“Thank you,” Casey says. He rubs his wrists and his fingers tingle, waking up.  
  
Janelle helps Casey sit up.  
  
“You didn’t come in here with an orderly,” he says.  
  
“I know. I’m supposed to, but it’s very late.”  
  
“They really think I’m that dangerous?”  
  
Janelle smiles faintly. “It’s just procedure, Casey.”  
  
“Do they do the same with the other patients?”  
  
Janelle is unwrapping the ice pack and doesn’t answer him. She lays the pack on his arm and Casey shudders from the cold, but it feels good.  
  
“How’s that?” she asks.  
  
“Good. Thank you,” Casey answers. He stares at Janelle’s face but she won’t look at him, so he asks her again.  
  
“Do they do the same with the other patients?”  
  
Janelle’s eyes flick to Casey’s and there’s some emotion in them that he can’t read, but it _is_ emotion, not the flat clinical stare that the others have for him.  
  
She says something so softly that Casey doesn’t think he’s heard it right, but the words slowly, unmistakably sink into his mind.  
  
“There are no other patients.”  
  
Casey stares at the side of Janelle’s face. He holds his breath.  
  
“They’re going to kill me, aren’t they?” he whispers. “They’re going to kill me when they’re done?”  
  
Janelle’s not looking at him again. She pops the juice open and inserts the straw, leaving it on the tray beside Casey’s bed.  
  
“That ice pack should stay cold for at least two hours, then you can let me know if you need another one. Have a good night, Casey.” She walks away and buzzes herself out of the room.  


  
_____  
  


Days pass after that, and Casey’s back in solitary. He never sees Janelle again. He thinks it will happen soon, they’ll come and get rid of him and he’ll never even know why.  
  
Pills, pills, pills and yet he keeps waking up. He tries to trick them into believing he’s swallowed the pills while he tucks them under his tongue, but they figure it out and use needles instead, which is much worse. After that he takes the pills, but they check his mouth every time, a gesture that makes Casey feel like livestock, bound for slaughter.  
  
Finally, a familiar face, his doctor. She’s smiling and crisp in her white coat, her hair pulled back into a girlish ponytail. She greets him as if she just saw him yesterday, as if he hasn’t been locked up alone in this room for endless weeks.  
  
“Your mother is coming to see you this afternoon, Casey. Aren’t you glad?”  
  
Huddled up against the head of his bed, Casey nods silently.  
  
“I’m sure she’ll want to hear all about how hard you’re working.”  
  
 _But I’m not working hard,_ Casey thinks. _I’m not doing anything except taking pills and doing what you people make me do and you know it, you fucking_ know _it, you bitch.  
  
_ The doctor has brought him a gift, an orange-and-white capsule. The colors make Casey think of fairground creamsicles.  
  
“Just so your mother’s visit won’t agitate you too much,” the doctor says, and hands it to Casey with a smile. He swallows dutifully, opens his mouth to prove it.  
  
When the doctor leaves, Casey goes into the bathroom. He turns on the shower full-blast and hot so that the tiny room fills up with steam, obscuring the video camera that blinks in the ceiling, even here. Nothing is sacred, not even taking a crap.  
  
Casey undresses and steps into the shower, avoiding the scalding spray. He sticks his finger down his throat and produces nothing but a noisy retch. He turns the shower on stronger, hoping it’s loud enough. He goes for two fingers. Nothing.  
  
Casey panics. He feels as if he can see right into his stomach, can see the creamsicle capsule dissolving in there, spilling its contents into his bloodstream. He braces himself against the wall and shoves his fingers down his throat, hard enough to make his eyes water, and finally vomits. The capsule comes up, worse for wear but still intact. Casey almost weeps in relief and pushes it down the drain with his foot.  


  
_____  
  


Casey’s visit with his mother does not take place in his white room but in another part of the hospital. His doctor escorts him there, followed by an orderly. The room is friendly, with soft chairs and paintings on the walls, but a camera’s red eye is blinking in the corner, as Casey knew it would be.  
  
Casey wants to throw himself at his mother’s feet but he has to control himself, at least for a little while. This is his last chance. The doctor sits with them and shows Casey’s mother some pictures that she says he’s painted and his mother smiles and nods and puts her hand over Casey’s.  
  
 _I never did those paintings, Mom. I’ve never even seen them before_. For a minute he wonders if maybe hid _did_ paint those pictures, but he pinches his leg hard and reels his thoughts back in with a snap.  
  
The doctor tells Casey’s mother how well he’s getting along with the other patients and how much progress he’s making.  
  
 _There are no other patients, Mom. She’s lying, lying, the bitch is lying._ Not yet, not yet. Wait.  
  
The doctor finally leaves, with a smile for Casey, but her eyes are hard and appraising.  
  
Casey holds his arms out to his mother and she gathers him into an embrace. She cradles him and strokes his back. Casey forgets the plan, undone by his mother’s touch. He nestles against her and drifts.  
  
 _Wake up, Casey, wake up,_ he thinks. _Focus. Focus.  
  
_ “Mom,” he whispers. His head is on her shoulder and he can speak right into her ear.  
  
“What is it, sweetheart?”  
  
“Shh, shh,” he whispers. He takes a deep breath. “Don’t say anything, Mom, please, just listen. Please, Mom.”  
  
His mother tenses in his arms and Casey knows he doesn’t have much time.  
  
“Mom, please listen to me, please believe me. This place isn’t what you think. You think they’re helping me but they’re not, they’re doing things to me, they’re making me sick. They keep me locked in a room all the time and I never see anyone, I don’t see any other patients, those pictures aren’t even mine, they’re…”  
  
He pauses and catches his breath. It’s going badly, he knows he isn’t making sense, but it’s hard, it’s so hard to think…  
  
Casey’s mother tries to look down into his face but he twists his hands into her sweater and pulls her close.  
  
“Mom, please, you have to get me out of here, you have to take me home. Tell them you want to take me home, even for a few days, Mom, please…you don’t know what they’re doing to me, they’re lying to you…they’re not doing anything for me, they shoot me up with stuff and make me talk to strangers and there’s no…there’s no…they’re not trying to make me well, look at me, Mom, they’re trying to make me _sick_ , or they’re…”  
  
He can feel his mother shaking and knows he’s losing, but he presses on, digging his fingers into her back.  
  
“I think they’re going to kill me, Mom, they have me in a place with no other patients, ask to see my room, Mom, they won’t show it to you or they’ll show you something that’s not my room, there aren’t any other patients because no one knows I’m up there, because I’m _not_ a patient, I’m a…I’m a lab rat or something but please, Mom, you have to believe me, you have to get me out of here before they…they’ll call you and say it was an accident but it won’t be, it _won’t_ be…”  
  
Casey’s mother pushes him away from her and there are tears on her face and oh, God, why did he think this would work?  
  
“Casey…they said you were getting better, oh my God, Casey…”  
  
“Mom, _no_ ,” Casey says. He’s still whispering but the camera is blinking in the corner and he knows they can see, knows they can hear. Casey grabs the front of his mother’s sweater and stares into her eyes. “ _No_ , I’m telling the truth, I know how it sounds, I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but please, ask them questions, ask to see my room, ask them why I have needle marks all over, ask them, ask them…”  
  
He hears footsteps coming towards the door and throws a panicked look over his shoulder. He turns back to his weeping mother and actually shakes her.  
  
“Don’t _cry_ , Mom, listen to me, please, _please_!”  
  
The door opens behind him and it’s the doctor and the orderly.  
  
“ _They’re going to kill me, Mom! Please help me! Help me!_ ”  
  
The orderly is lifting Casey bodily off his mother and Casey is screaming, clawing at his mother for help, leaving red streaks on her face and neck while she sobs and shudders, her hands over her eyes. The doctor puts an arm around her shoulders and helps her up.  
  
“ _NO, MOM, PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME HERE, MOM! I’LL FUCKING DIE IN HERE THEY’RE KILLING ME MOM, PLEASE! MOM!!_ ”  
  
The doctor escorts Casey’s mother out of the room while the orderly prepares a syringe, pinning Casey to the floor with his knees.  
  
“Nighty-night, Casey,” the orderly says.  
  
“ _Fuck you_ ,” Casey spits back and he gets the orderly by surprise and wrenches the syringe from him. Casey jabs it into the orderly’s neck and it’s enough, enough time for him to wriggle out and run for the door.  
  
“ _Mom!_ ” Casey calls and runs down the hall, but his mother is gone, disappeared into some office or elevator with the doctor and he’ll probably never see her again.  
  
Casey runs. His feet are bare and skidding on the floor but he runs, blindly, down the hall, pushing open a door that sets off an alarm and down stairs, not knowing where he’s going and now he’s not even thinking of his mother, he’s just thinking about getting _out_ getting _out_ if he can just get _outside_ he can…he can…  
  
He’s in a part of the hospital that he’s never seen and some part of him sees that there are people around, real people, and there’s a woman standing at a bank of pay phones with a bouquet of flowers in her arm and she stares at Casey wide-eyed and shrinking back against the wall.  
  
Casey runs and now he can hear people shouting and he sees a door…doors…sliding doors and outside outside outside, if he can just make it, just make it…  
  
Casey goes down hard when they get him. His head slams on the floor. His sight goes black for a second and his ears fill with a sound like microphone feedback.  
  
Someone turns him over and he groans, opening his eyes to trebled vision and there’s a taste of blood in his mouth.  
  
“Don’t,” he slurs. “No.” He can feel himself being lifted.  
  
“I think that boy is hurt,” he hears through the ringing in his head and he can almost make out the lady with the flowers.  
  
“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll take care of him,” someone says.  
  
“Tell my mom,” Casey says to her, or thinks he says, because his mouth isn’t working and the words aren’t coming out right. “Please, please, tell my mom…”  
  
Then he’s moving and he can see the ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights passing by overhead, fast like a carousel and it’s making him sick.  
  
“Stop…don’t…don’t…” he mutters but it doesn’t stop until he sees a green ceiling above him and then they’re lifting him again and laying him out on a hard surface and someone’s tying his arms down and he’s been here before and terror cuts through the fog and pain in his head.  
  
“Wait,” he pleads but no one listens and then something is in his mouth and he can’t say anything else.  
  
 _Don’t don’t don’t!_ he screams in his head and there’s cold jelly on his temples and for a second it feels almost good but he knows, he knows…  
  
 _Don’t, don’t, please please stop don’t Mom! Mommy! M…  
  
_ Casey’s teeth clamp down hard and everything turns white, like a camera flash bursting in his eyes.  
  
And white.  
  
And silent.  
  
Drift. 


End file.
